Dear Kessygirl,

Thank you for your post. You explained about your dad’s situation. You asked about your dad’s new tablets to increase his appetite.

Steroids are often used as part of overall symptom control management. The aim of these tablets is to make someone feel better overall in themselves, and part of this may be that they feel like eating a little. This is to enhance an individual’s quality of life as even eating a small amount can be a pleasurable experience. So there isn’t a direct drive to get someone to eat more as the aim is to help make someone feel better in themselves.

Regarding your question about morphine, I assume that the palliative care nurse has assessed his current pain levels and thinks that a small reduction in morphine could be achieved. This may mean that your dad is then less drowsy, or has less bowel side effects whilst being able to maintain good pain control. This advice can be adjusted each time the patient is re-assessed by a nurse or doctor.

I hope that this reply has been helpful.

Best wishes

Vanda

Cancer Information Nurse

Cancer Research UK

Angel Building

407 St John Street

London

EC1V 4AD

Freephone: 0808 800 4040

Hi Kessygirl

I have just caught up with your post and would just like to say that your Dad is going through much what my hubby did during his journey with cancer.  He spent many hours dozing and watching tv and had little appetite or interest in food in general.  He was also on morphine tablets and then had it in liquid form (the latter being easier to adjust dosage as and when necessary we were told by his palliative care team).  Like yourself I 'needed to know' what was happening as it helped me cope day to day (hubby preferred to take it as it came and not talk about it) but if  your Dad is happy for his 'team' to talk to you about things he can tell them and then you can ask them any questions if it helps.  My husband had steriods a couple of times during his treatment to try and help with appetite and also improve the quality of the life he was leading (we were going away for a long weekend in the first instance and he did enjoy the hotel food). Its not easy to see decline in loved ones but being kept comfortable and pain free which is what our palliative care/district nurses achieved with my hubby brought a certain amount of help. Best regards Jules54

I think you should go with your instincts, keep him comfortable with morphine and don't worry about his appetite. There are energy drinks he can have which contain everything he needs. If he's constipated it's important to give him Movical, as if the small intestine can burst, causing instant death. My husband only had one bout of diarreah but it was awful & took all his dignity away. Put a waterproof pad on the bed. These are easy to clean & can be bought on EBay. This is all the advice I can give as we are helpless against cancer. My husband was told to take all the morphine he needed in the form of patches. As he grew worse, the patches were stronger. I also had liquid morphine called Oxynorm & could top him up with this if he was having a bad day. I used a lot of this towards the end. If you are unsure contact Macmillan & I would also recommend counselling.